I have a lot of respect for anyone that compiles a pre-season ranking. For that reason, I rarely make judgments (at least publicly) on the many lists that start popping up around now. It is pretty easy to defend a wide variety of opinions on any one team. At this time last season, if you had said Syracuse was going to get a one-seed and North Carolina would miss the tournament, I would have politely disagreed and ended up looking foolish.

Andy Katz probably does the most famous off-season top 25. By the time he revealed the latest iteration last week, I suspect it was the result of many criticisms, constructive and otherwise, of his first draft in April. As such, it’s probably a good predictor of the pre-season media and coaches polls that will be unveiled shortly. Katz had Purdue ranked second until Robbie Hummel’s tragic ACL…

The Big Ten appears to be winning the pre-season campaign for the mostly-meaningless title of “best conference” this season. They are expected to have a strong upper tier and even in terms of overall conference strength, the Big Ten may reign supreme. The conference figures to have a weak back end, but the perennial champ in this department - the ACC - isn’t going to have as much junk in its trunk as it did last season.

An additional component to this argument is that the Big Ten retains more talent from last season than any other conference in the country, or at least it should be part of the argument, because that is what the cold, hard data tells us.

Note: The figures below are given in terms of returning offense and defense (vice returning minutes). More details after the data.